Vision is the end goal... Leadership is about learning how to work with people... Do people like me? . Vision is the spectacular thing that drives us to do the mundane. Succeeding is doing the mundane things day after day after day after day, it’s that discipline stuff we have to do. Successful people are the people willing to do the things unsuccessful people aren’t willing to do. Vision is the end goal, it’s the far out thing that is spectacular; it’s the grand idea that drives us to do the daily tasks to actually get there. So, I believe that just like we have company vision statements, we ought to have personal vision statements and personal leadership vision statements. I want you to start working on creating a personal vision statement – to encapsulate what you want to become as a leader. As a leader, ask yourself: what are my strengths and what do I want to accomplish? Begin working through it. It doesn’t have to be some big, long thing with lots of bullet points. Get to work! Write that personal vision statement today. How do you cast the vision? Here are three thoughts from Aristotle’s book, The Rhetoric, written thousands of years ago. It’s what I call the three legs of persuasion. Leg One: Ethos or Ethics. In order be a good vision caster, you have to be an ethical person meaning you operate out of a single set of morals, ethics and values. If you are trying to persuade, influence and gather people to go with you, they need to believe in you, know who you are, trust you, respect you and admire you – all which creates loyalty. You do that by being an ethical person. But there are two other parts… Leg Two: Logos or Logic and… Leg Three: Pathos or Passion So in order to be a great vision caster, you have to be both passionate and logical and people tend to be one or the other. They tend to be really logical and can explain everything right down to the nitty-gritty, but they just don’t inspire people because they lack passion. Then there are other people who are passionate, but what they say doesn’t make sense and you are left scratching your head. Make sure the main platform is ethics, but then include the other two prongs – passion and logic. Make sure when you cast your vision that it makes sense. Run it by some people. Make sure it is clear and concise, but also be passionate about it, exuberant about it. When you combine those three things, ethics, logic and passion, you are a long way toward persuading people to follow your vision. Leadership is about learning how to work with people. As leaders we have to interact with people, we have to influence people, we have to engage with people and so learning how to cultivate good relationships with people is imperative to good leadership. The first skill is building rapport – essentially making a connection with people. This is whether you’ve just met them, are sitting next to them in an airplane, met them at a wedding or party, etc., but I my focus is primarily on building relationships with people on your team. If you want to make a connection and go deeper with people or team members, here are 3 principles for building rapport and building connections. 1. Ask questions. Find out who they are, where they are from, are they married, how many kids do they have, what do they like to do for hobbies, where they went to school, where they grew up – just ask questions. People like to be the center of attention. They like to have you interested in them. Lot of times leaders and people think they need to be interesting. While it is important to be interesting, it is far more important is to BE interested. So to build rapport with people, be interested in them and ask questions. 2. Find a connection. I believe if you ask enough questions and navigate those questions well, you are going to find some connection. It might be that you grew up in the same state or region, you went to the same college, or maybe you know somebody who went to the same college, or you are both fans of the same sports team or maybe you both golf or you’ve both been married for 20 years or maybe you both have teenagers… you get the point, but find the connection. 3. Go in that direction. Once you find a connection, go deep in that direction. Finding that connection and going deep creates rapport. They will immediately light up, feel that connection and engage with you. It is a very simple process, whether you are meeting someone for the first time or it’s someone that works in your company, your division or on your team. Be interested. Ask questions. Find a connection and you will find that the relationship will deepen, they will trust you more and you will build rapport. The second people skill I want to encourage you to think about is to care for people. Now you might say, “wait a minute, isn’t caring a feeling?” Yes, caring is a feeling but it is also a skill. What does it mean to care for people? In my opinion, caring for people means that you serve people. If you want to be a great leader, you must be willing to serve. I know this seems counter intuitive, but great leaders help the people who follow them. Nobody wants to serve a leader who doesn’t care. If people ever get to a point where they think you are only out for yourself, they will disengage. Always ask yourself, how can I care for the people who follow me. How can I demonstrate that I like them, that I am out for their best interests, that I am going to serve them and that I want to bring them along with me? Demonstrating care is a great way to create loyalty. In fact, it’s point 3 in one of my keynote speeches, The Art of Influence: Consider other people’s interests more important than your own and by doing so you create loyalty. The last one – a great people skill – is friendliness. When you meet somebody, when you interact with somebody, be nice, smile a little bit, laugh, open up, and be friendly. Nobody wants to do business or follow a grumpy curmudgeon. One of the things I think has made me successful is that I have a friendly demeanor. I like to laugh, I like to smile, I am interested in people, and I like to engage. Instill a little jocularity into your life and people will find that you are friendly. When they find you are friendly, guess what happens? They will like you. People like friendly people. Your success, to a great degree, depends on whether or not people like you. Let others be the star of the conversation. If you care about them, if you love people, you will be liked. Go out of your way to ask, what can I do to help you? Always ask: Am I being friendly? Do people like me? Our friends have a huge role in what kind of people we become and thus the kind of leaders we become. For example, I have 3-4 people I call my best friends. We enjoy lunches and dinners together, we get together as couples, we have even gone on vacations together. So I want to challenge you to take a look at your friends because we learn how to talk from our friends, we learn how to think from our friends, we learn our attitudes from our friends. The things we do, the things we say, all these things are groomed into us by the people with whom we spend the most time – we often refer to this as influence. When a person wants to transform and become a great leader, they start studying leadership and apply themselves in their business but their friends are holding them back by. So, I want to challenge you to think about a few things as it relates to your friends. First of all, pick successful friends. The people you spend the most time with should be people going in the same direction as you. They are trying to achieve success, they are motivated, they are encouraging. Next, pick encouraging friends. Choose people who are going to challenge you and encourage you and say, you can do it. You don’t want to hang around with naysayers. Third, think about associations, as it relates to your friends. Use the following framework as you think about your associations. I classify everybody into 3 associations and I would encourage you to do the same thing. The three categories are: 1) expanded associations, 2) limited associations and 3) disassociations. 1. Expanded associations are the people with whom you want to spend more time. You want to get into a mutually beneficial relationship, you want to spend more time with and expand relationships with certain people, these are the people that are going to help you become more successful, who are going to challenge you to grow as a person, who are going to help you become a better leader. 2. Limited associations are people you spend time with, but by spending time with them you aren’t necessarily going to get better, grow or become a better leader. These might be family members or a co-worker, but they aren’t the people with whom you want to go to lunch, hang out and start new projects. 3. Disassociations are people you need to let go from your life. Now, I am not suggesting that you are mean spirited or chew them out and tell them to get out of your life, but you do let them go. You stop pursuing them, you stop accepting their offers to go do things, instead you shift yourself towards the people with whom you want to expand your associations and relationships. Friends are powerful influencers in our lives, even if they are not specifically involved in our business. So think about your friends today and think about this simple question: Are my friends going to help me become a better leader or are my friends going to keep me from becoming a better leader or will I just stay in the middle and not grow? You want to find friends who challenge and encourage you to be a better leader. Friends are an integral part of your transformation as a leader. Leaders are the people willing to make the tough, often unpopular decisions even when others or the tide is against them. This is what sets them apart. These decisions can cause people to be mad at us and to question us, and that can be lonely because it sets you apart. When this happens, I encourage you to keep your eye on the ball, think again about your grand plan, your grand vision. I want you to think about the end game because usually when this happens, followers and non-leaders, they are often just looking at this little target and that’s all they can see. They can’t see the bigger plan, they can’t see the bigger picture. Because as leaders, we are the ones who don’t just see the expedient thing right now, we look down the road. So, when you are feeling alone and alienated from others, remember that often times, it takes a while for the rest of the people to see that ultimately you made the right decision even when they didn’t necessarily agree or want to go along with it. Keeping your eye on the vision is what pulls us through, what motivates us, what encourages us. The second thing I want to say is to have great friends, leaders who are friends and colleagues who are friends who will support you and give you encouragement, to have relationships that will pull you through those tough times. It can be lonely at the top sometimes so that’s when it’s critical to keep our eye on the grand vision and the big picture. But, if we do it right, it doesn’t have to be so lonely because we have surrounded ourselves with the right kind of people, friends and support to get us through. In doing so, we become transformational leaders for the long haul because we are able to make tough decisions, stick to them and pull our organizations and teams through to that greater vision and greater accomplishments. What I believe is that as leaders, we need to transform our thinking and understand what the word ‘motivation’ really means. The root word of motivation is motive. Well, what is a motive? The dictionary defines motivation as a compelling reason to act. A compelling reason to act! So in actuality, motivation is really logical. Inspiration is different and has more to do with emotion than motivation. I once heard a story about a guy who was about 150 pounds overweight. We all know how to lose weight, right? Well, this guy also knew how to lose weight, but he didn’t lose weight until he found out that his daughter needed a new kidney and that he was the perfect match for it. The doctor said they couldn’t do surgery because he was too fat. So the dad asks how much weight he needed to lose and how much time did he have to lose it? The doctor’s answer was 75 pounds in 9 months or so. Guess what dad did? Dad lost the weight. He finally had the motivation. He had a compelling reason to act. So the key to being motivated is getting in touch with that compelling reason to act. Motivation is what’s going to drive you when you don’t feel like taking action. The fact is that no matter how great of a leader you are or how typically motivated you might be, we all go through those times where we just don’t want to get out of bed or feel like going to work; we just don’t feel like executing on the plan. But as leaders we have to and great leaders are people who do. The difference between successful people and unsuccessful people often times is simply the fact that successful people execute. They do it when they don’t feel like doing it. So first and foremost in regards to motivation, ask yourself: what is my compelling reason to act? Why am I doing what I’m doing? Why should I do what I don’t want to do? Because it’s going to get you where you want to go. People talk about finding your ‘why’, that’s your motivation. If you don’t know why you are doing something, then you won’t be able to motivate yourself. As a leader, you often have personal reasons why you want to do something, but you also have organizational reasons why you want to do something. Getting in touch with that motivation and then putting it on paper, putting it where you can see so you are constantly reminding yourself, constantly focusing on that compelling reason, remembering it and ruminating on it and thinking about it so it’s always there on top of your mind. That’s what is going to keep you motivated. So a big question is how do you motivate other people? Truthfully, we can’t. I can’t give you your compelling reason to act. You have to find your compelling reason, but as leaders we can help others find their compelling reason to act and help them get there. Motivation is that compelling reason to act. Be thinking about your compelling reason to act and help other people in your organization understand their compelling reason to act so that they can achieve the things that they want to achieve. That’s how you transform yourself, that’s how you transform other people in your organization! There is a difference between motivation and inspiration and how people tend to think of motivation as being emotionally-based. It’s really a compelling reason to act. People might think that what they typically call motivation might actually be inspiration and as leaders, it’s important for us to be inspirational. What does inspire mean? Inspire, if you go back to the original language, means ‘to breathe’. It’s an excellent way for us to remember what it means for us to inspire. It means that we are breathing life into people. Remember when we were growing up, we had to take health class where we had to learn how to perform CPR. There was “Resuscitation Annie,” and she would be laying there dying and you had to breathe life into Annie. That’s really what inspiration is. We are breathing, figuratively speaking. I want to ask you as a transformational leader, are you helping your followers transform themselves and transform their work by being a person who breathes life into people? The number one way that we breathe life into people is in the words we use. There is an old proverb that I love. It says that the tongue has the power of life and death and as leaders; we are to inspire people. The predominant way that we do that is through the language that we use, how we speak to people. When we are interacting with people we can either: a) Cause life - We can cause them to think better of themselves and to think good thoughts and have better attitudes. b) We can breathe death - We can condemn them and cause them to doubt themselves simply by the words we use. Our words have power! You can change a person’s mental chemicals, their brain chemicals, simply by the words that you use. If you were to come home and see that your wife had gotten her hair done and you said, “What happened to your hair”? They wouldn’t think to themselves, “Oh, it’s time for me to let the angry chemicals go,” No, their brain would just release these chemicals. Now the reverse is also true. We can talk to people and say positive things like, “You did a fantastic job!” When we say positive things, the brain releases the right kinds of chemicals, which then makes them feel better. I want to challenge you to be transformational; you can transform other people by the words that you use, by inspiring them. You did a great job! I am so proud of you! I am so excited about where our company is going this year! I am so excited about the things that we are accomplishing as a team! The positive words we use is like breathing life into people. I want you to really be listening to yourself talk. Ask yourself: Am I the type of person who breathes life? Am I an inspirer or am I the type of person who is killing it off by the way I talk? Be an inspiration, a transformational, inspirational person by the way you talk. Go out and inspire somebody today.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 10:31:33 +0000
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